Sharing My Handmade Life

Scrap Journaling

The last couple of months have been quite a rollercoaster ride with family challenges. But now I’m happy to say we’re on the other side of it all, and moving forward!

Well, at least that’s my intent!

Case in point: Dog on the left-1000 mph, dog on the right-5 mph, toddler in the lead-whatever direction or speed strikes his fancy. This has been my life lately! I don’t see things changing much in the future, I just see it with new eyes and a grateful heart.

I will be spending a lot more time on the other side of the mountains helping my daughter take care of this lil guy while she works, gets her education, and takes care of her new home.

Maintaining what I have re-established i.e.; my shoppe, this blog, and art journaling, from two bases of operation may get a bit tricky at times, but I’ll give it my best shot.

Before I took off to help her move in to her new home, I created a few pages to share on IG. Well actually, I got too busy to even do much of that.

Although, I did share this one, I didn’t say much about it. Cutting out images and giving them a new background is one of my favorite techniques. Polka dots and colorful birds, love it!

This is a journal I pulled out of my shoppe because the original book pages were just to fragile to work with, I’ve had to do that with several of my journals.

I strengthened this page with a layer of gesso, paint scrapes, and washi sheets I picked up at Michaels a few years ago, also some skinny washi down the spine. I decorated with washi tape, a doily, and images. There is definitely room to journal, so I may go back and do that later. This is an image I pulled from a journal I took apart. I won’t go into the type of journal, just that it wasn’t my style. Waste not, want not I say.

A cute little piece that was floating around the studio.

More randomness that needed a home.

I have so much to catch up on because of being away for a week, but I hope to find time to work on my journals too.

I worked on some newness for the shoppe before I left, and I’ll share some of that soon.

So, this morning I had a yen to write a blog post, just like many other mornings in the past. The problem is/was that I had already shared these photos on Instagram and Facebook, and I didn’t necessarily want to “saturate” social media with the same material, I guess that’s kind of a taboo.

But, I find that I have more to say on a subject than what I can say in IG or FB, which finally brings me to my questions: Does it really matter, or actually bother anyone if I share the same photos on my blog as I do on other social media? Do any of you really see my photos any where else? (IG is a bit fickle) Lastly, should I continue to “share” photos from IG to FB? We’ll get back to this.

Now, on to some journal sharing…

This is a journal I put together with some lovely happy mail from an IG friend, @misbabsybarnes, her style is to die for! She quilts in the most awesome way, her decorating is Kitschy McFab, she’s a great art journaler, and her thrifty finds are over the top! I kinda like her!

Anyway, we shared some art journaling bits, and I came up with the idea of making twin art journals for the two of us. She’s been working on hers for a while, and I finally broke mine out recently.

That cover decor was a complete screw up of another project, but I couldn’t throw it away, I’m glad I didn’t!

A case in point of not having enough room/time/patience to write about in my IG sharing. This is an envelope that I included in the middle of our journals. I filled mine with the ephemera Miss Babsy sent me that would fit. It’s like my favorite detail in this journal!

I have a box filled with crappity-crap from around my art room that I pull from to do my pages, but I rely on this little envelope for a lot of the cute stuff.

A little mini page I made from a piece of painted background I use in my shoppe journals. I want the little gifts I receive in happy mail to be somewhere I can enjoy them once in a while, like that camera. That sticker is from a shop that’s no longer in business, which makes me sad, so I’m using them a lot in here to.

I did this page before we took off to see our daughter in eastern Washington. It’s kind of a Fall road trip theme.

The trip was very short, and this is my happy being home again page spread. My daughter is buying a new house, and the moving in day was moved back, so we came home the same day. It was a rough day of driving, so home sure looked good!

I can’t resist images like this of tall mid century buildings, especially with all that color, love! That background page is from what the “Art to the 5th” girls call “underpaper”, so I will too. It’s the paper I use to protect my work surface, and as you know, I don’t throw much away.

I love creating scenes! No, not in public, but with things I find and put together. All three of these images are from different sources.

Apparently, this girl is spouting off about something, and the little guy says, “Ya, talk to the butterfly, I’m outta here!”

Along with keeping up with everything else that’s going on in my life, I’ve decided to take some time out to work on a few things for my shoppe.

My blog, my art, and my shoppe are things that I decided I needed to set aside for my self (sanity). I’ll try not to let them get in the way of the “rest of my life”, but the “rest of my life” will also have to make room for my “creative life”! It’s been exhausting at times, but I haven’t been this happy in a while! 🙂

First, I want to share a couple of art journal pages I did last week, then a few new goodies from my shoppe (with a coupon, so stay with me!)

I start thinking about Fall on the first day of August. Red has been a huge color for me lately, and it shows on my pages. There’s something about a vintage table setting that just gets me. I love vintage home decor!

I received this stamp from one of my favorite Etsy shops PreciousOwl. Every time I visit her shop I see something new, she probably thinks I’m stalking her, it’s really more of a crush!

That beyond cute vintage playing card is from another favorite shop called VintageScrapShop. I follow her on Instagram too, LOVE! There are so many shops I love on Etsy, I’ll try to share them more often.

Now to mine…

We’ll start with Fall Decorative Clips. I decided to mix my Decorative Clip packages up a bit. Instead of all Floral Clips or all Tassel Clips, in each package you’ll get a variety of each one, along with a Button Clip and a Yo Yo Clip, this is an example. It’s a bit hard to see, but that Button Clip with the little bird has a mini doily on the back.

I went a little nuts on the ephemera packs, but they seem to sell, so what the heck. As you can see, it’s quite a mix of things old and new.

Halloween Clips, a different selection with these, Tulle Clips and a Double Ribbon. I made a super cute Halloween art journal for my shoppe, but it’s already found a forever home.

But there are plenty of these Halloween ephemera packs available. I haven’t started working on my Halloween pages yet, but I set aside a few goodies of my own to work with.

So, the shoppe‘s up and running at full speed! I’ll be filling it with Christmas goodies as soon as I’m organized.

But, if your ready for fall creating, and you can’t resist, please be sure to use the coupon code CUSTOMERLOVE20 at checkout to receive 20% off your entire purchase!

Well, that was weird! It seems that taking a break was a good thing, but now I have some “Splaining to do Lucy!”

Hmmm…where do I start?

First a huge THANK YOU for all the beautiful comments when I said my sad farewell! THANK YOU!!!

Now to explain:

Simply put, things were just a little too crazy when I made that decision, family stuff you know. I had recently gone through some family stuff and tried to keep this all together, and it wasn’t fun. Next time I’ll just take a break.

I do want to apologize though, I hate being wishy washy, but I’m over the stress hump now, and I’ve realized how large a hole was in my life without all this!

Now to the fun stuff…

I’ve been staying busy in the garden, but have managed to put a little time aside for art journaling. I pulled this one out of the shop because I loves him! So Cute!

I’ve been playing around with some “Back 2 School” ephemera I put together (there are some ephemera packs in my shoppe). So, I thought I would share something I worked on this morning.

A process post, Yay!

Because most people don’t have a Zutter binding machine, and I suck at lining things like this up, I used a regular old hole punch and a pair of scissors to pop this card into my journal. You just punch the holes accordingly, then snip along the edge, and pop it into your journal.

As you can see I prepared it with a few swipes of gesso.

Next, I added some color. I’m keeping the other side of this card intact, I love the retro look of it.

I added a white doily as a background. One thing I like to do is hit the edges with sand paper while it’s still a little damp, it helps seal the edge so that it doesn’t pull up or peal.

Here’s the finished page. I used a #8B pencil to go around the edges of the images.

So, there you have it. That wasn’t too difficult…in other words…next time, just a break!!!

I’m having a few technical difficulties with my blog right now, I’m in the process of working them out. So, I would really appreciate it if I got a few comments letting me know that this actually got to a reader or two.

So PLEASE give me a shout if this makes it to your door!!!

Once again,

Thank you for the visit,

Much Love,

~Patty

(p.s. I’ve filled my shoppe with lots of newness if you want to check it out. Get 20% off your entire purchase with the coupon code CUSTOMERLOVE20 at checkout)

So, I’m pretty excited about something! (I must be, to be dusting off this old blog to talk about it!) I’ve decided to challenge myself to do an art journaling page a day. I’m not sure how long I will be doing this, but I have been sorely absent from my art room for far too long!

This is what I came up with on Tuesday, kind of a mash up around this cute little sleeping mouse. The point right now is to jump in and get something done, so I’m not worrying too much about composition, especially if there is a time constraint.

This is what I came up with yesterday. Because I am in the middle of trying to get caught up on my Project Life albums, I didn’t have too much time to spend on this. So, what I decided to do was use what I could find on my desk (apparently my desk has some pretty cute things hanging around on it). Actually, these were some discarded bits from yesterday’s page along with some other junkity junk.

But, this gave me an idea! What if I used all up all the accumulated crap-olla from all the “catch-alls” in and around my art room to work on this project. There are some strange items, so this won’t be an easy task, but at least it will be interesting (to me at least).

This craziness above my desk. I love having a convenient place to pop scraps and such, but some of these have been on here for years, time to dust them off!

This sits next to my desk, I love the randomness these smaller bits give my pages.

And here is what I pulled from every corner of my room, at least what was visible. I’m pretty sure there’s more lurking in drawers and cupboards, but I only have so much strength, this will have to do for now.

I’m hoping I’ll have the time to post an update of the pages I come up with from all this, but my track record hasn’t been very good lately. So, let’s just say I’ll try. I will definitely be posting them on my instagram account eclectic_artjournals

Feel free to harass me into writing a blog post about it, that just might be the nudge I need 🙂